


Animorphs Christmas in July: Slashersivi

by ChiropteraJones



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: AU, Gen, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChiropteraJones/pseuds/ChiropteraJones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was written for the Animorphs Christmas in July fic exchange. I drew Slashersivi, who asked for an AU or crossover. I don't know enough about Marvel to do a crossover but here are some superpowered kids anyway. </p><p>Merry Christmas?</p>
    </blockquote>





	Animorphs Christmas in July: Slashersivi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slashersivi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashersivi/gifts).



> This was written for the Animorphs Christmas in July fic exchange. I drew Slashersivi, who asked for an AU or crossover. I don't know enough about Marvel to do a crossover but here are some superpowered kids anyway. 
> 
> Merry Christmas?

It was night-time, and the forest was split with the searching beams of spotlights, and the sound of Dracon-fire and screaming.

 

Once again, I performed that little mental shift that I’d become so used to, and blinked out of existence. I could survey the battle now in relative safety - while I focused, I was totally invisible. Me, my weapons and my costume.

 

The Yeerk facility wasn’t very large, and it wasn’t very deep in the forest. They’d razed everything in a circle around it, surrounded by fences that had done absolutely nothing to keep us out. A few dozen human-Controllers with Dracon beams and even more Hork-Bajir were doing their best to keep us in, though.

 

Ax had a concrete wall to his back as he fought. Jake had reached the fence – he was easy to find. All you had to do was follow the brilliant green lances of energy to their source. Rachel moved fast, never in one place for long. 

I side-stepped, narrowly avoiding the clawed foot of a bellowing Hork-Bajir as it stumbled backwards, hands to its eyes. With the same movement I swung my baton as hard as I could. I closed my eyes the split-second it hit, and heard the bellow come to a stop with a coughing noise as I drove the wind out of the Hork-Bajir. I wasn’t strong enough to break Hork-Bajir bones, but the knife I had on my belt was good enough to finish them off. How could they defend against someone they couldn’t see?

 

I wasn’t supposed to get too involved in the close fighting. I was too valuable – valuable for my other power. But at times like this, when we were outnumbered and hemmed in, I ended up getting in the thick of it anyway.

 

This time I didn’t have to finish the Hork-Bajir I’d disabled, though. Rachel slammed into him, at the end of a great leap that ended on the Hork-Bajir’s chest.

 

Blood sprayed, and I heard her wild yell. There wasn’t much left of its chest when she was through with it. With her power activated, she was three times faster, stronger, and heavier than the strongest Hork-Bajir, and almost invulnerable.  

 

I couldn’t think about that target for long. I turned and picked out another. He was one of three controllers surrounding Ax. Ax’s tailblade whipped in a silver streak, followed by screeches of alien pain, but three was a bit many even for him. I drew my knife and approached as Dracon beams screamed over my head. I’d been hit by sheer chance before, but there was nothing more I could do about it.

 

There – an opening. I stepped in and slashed the back of the Hork-Bajir’s leg. It went down. I braced my foot on its chest, narrowly avoiding an elbow blade, and went for its throat with the knife. Blood gushed warm over my hands.

 

I stepped back again. This was the way I usually worked – I stood back and waited, watching for opportunities to take my enemies unaware. I was also watching my teammates. There had been too many close calls.

 

I marked them off in my mind again as I scanned the battleground. Rachel, an unstoppable whirl of golden hair, silver skin and blood. Tobias, hanging back much as I was, over everybody’s heads. Ax. Jake, shooting his green blasts of energy.

 

Marco was only a black-and-white blur, occasionally resolving into his short, stocky self for an instant before zooming away again. I caught a glimpse of his masked face as he paused, and it seemed like there was a long moment of delay before four human-Controllers collapsed in his wake, screaming.

 

I took out a human-Controller who was aiming his Dracon beam at Tobias – from his perspective, a baton swung out of nowhere at his head. He didn’t even have time to scream.

 

“Retreat!” I heard Jake yell. “Everybody out!”

 

I left the Controller where he lay and ran for the trees, collapsing my baton. Along the way I fought my way through the remains of a chain-link fence. It had been melted and fused together, and pushed aside.

 

Ax was still hemmed in by Controllers; he wasn’t following.

 

“Ax, _now!_ ” Jake had developed an impressive shouting voice since that night in the construction site.

 

I ran through the scrub, bushes grabbing at my legs, and stumbled to a halt by Jake’s side. Rachel and Tobias were with him. I let the invisibility blink off.

 

Jake glanced at me, then past me. “Cassie,” he said, breathing hard. “And… there’s Ax. Force field going up... _now_. Let’s get out of here, people.”

 

I looked back and saw a human-Controller sprinting after us. They came up against the force field that Jake had left to cover our retreat and stopped dead. They shouted after us, but I didn’t hear what they said. _Brave Yeerk,_ I thought, half in a daze.  _Following us after we chewed up that many Hork-Bajir? Brave or stupid. What are they thinking?_

 

It would be so much easier if I could stop thinking things like that. Stop imagining what it was like to be one of them. Stop thinking about them as people.

 

We ran – five teenagers, and a four-legged blue alien. We ran from the scene of carnage we’d created, most of us too out of breath to talk.

 

I should probably explain.

 

Our planet is under attack. The Yeerks, aliens that crawl inside your ear, wrap around your brain and take over your mind, are here.   If they found one of us – they would know everything. Our secret identities, the secret hideout of the dome ship we had in the forest, the valley of free Hork-Bajir in the mountains, everything. And Earth’s last hope would be lost.

 

A dying alien, Prince Elfangor, had given us our powers. Aximili, the Andalite currently running in front of me, was his younger brother. Both of them had the morphing power – the ability to change into any animal they could acquire the DNA of. Elfangor had attempted to give us the morphing power too… but something had gone wrong. For whatever reason – whether it was because the blue cube was configured for Andalites, or if there was something wrong with it – we didn’t know. It had given us a grab-bag of superpowers instead, ranging from Tobias’ flight and enhanced senses to Rachel’s super strength.

 

“OK, let’s slow to a walk for a while,” Jake said eventually, when we were far enough that we could no longer hear the Yeerk presence in the woods, or see the spotlights. “Good job, everyone. They won’t be trying that again in a hurry.”

 

I flexed my hand open and closed. It was sticky with blood, human and alien. I tried not to think of the way the baton had felt when it made contact with that Controller’s skull.

 

“We’re going to slow down _more_?” Marco said plaintively, zipping back to appear at Jake’s shoulder.

 

“OK, sure, let’s do that. It’s not like I wanted to be home sometime this week.”

 

“So carry me,” Jake said shortly.

 

“Urgh, no. I don’t call you Big Jake for nothing, you weigh a _ton_. Get a piggyback from your hulking cousin.”

 

“Cassie?” Tobias said. He was hugging one arm close to his body. What I could see of his face behind the bird mask he wore was pale in the moonlight. His costume leg was soaked with red.

 

“Oh, sorry,” I murmured. I should have seen that earlier.

 

He dropped back and so did I, so we could fall to the tail of the group and I could lay a hand on his shoulder while we walked.  He sighed as my power started working, numbing the pain and knitting flesh together strand by strand.

 

“Got me by the leg and I couldn’t shake him loose,” Tobias mumbled.

 

“Yeah, me too,” Marco said, suddenly behind us. His wound was smaller, a long shallow burn on his ribs. “This sucks. I’m going to need to fix this costume, _again_. Why can’t you fix cloth, too, Cassie? Frankly, it’s inconvenient.”

 

“A bit too slow, Marco?” Rachel called back. “You let one of them get you?” She was in front; I think only Jake’s quiet words stopped her from forging on ahead of the rest of us. I don’t know if Rachel gets tired anymore. She could have given Jake a piggyback ride home – and had, on some occasions. She’d carried us all home before.

 

“Get me? In their dreams,” Marco scoffed. “Pretty sure it was an accident, I grazed one of the beams. Too fast for my own good.”

 

If it hadn’t been for my power, everyone but Rachel and Ax would be maimed or dead several times over by now. My power worked on aliens, too, but Ax usually just morphed to take care of any injuries he had.

 

I could have healed the Controllers we’d left dying back there. I could have fixed the burns Jake left, the cuts from Ax’s blade, the knife wounds and head injuries I’d left behind me.

 

But how foolish would that be, to heal the wounds I’d inflicted myself? Who healed their enemies?

 

I had been given so much power. Such a wonderful power. So why did I spend so much more time killing people than fixing them? 


End file.
